Month: October 2015

Yesterday we read the exhortations of Samuel Ruggles, champion of improvement, for the establishment of a National University at Albany. So, what happened with that? The dream of a national university was as old as the dream of our nation itself. The idea was first attributed to Samuel Blodget (sometimes Blodgett), who was said to …

19th century prose can be tough to get through, and exhortative speeches even more so. But sometimes if you can wade through the effusiveness you can find (perhaps to your dismay) that some things today are very much the same as they were 160 years ago. As an example, we present this impassioned plea of …

The NYS Archives dates this incredible photo of the Albany riverfront to 1911. The view is from the Albany Yacht Club pier, looking across the footbridge that crossed the basin to the very foot of State Street. Very notable are the ends of the buildings advertising three of Albany’s local beers, making that important first …

From the NYS Archives, a rare view of the iconic State Education Building under construction. The Archives dates this as Jan. 1, 1912, but a number of other photos in the archive carry January 1 dates, so I think it’s a default date rather than an actual one. But if this was taken in 1912, …

Well, we’re on a bit of a Cohoes jag, and why not? The Spindle City sometimes had a bit of an inferiority complex, failing to get the respect of the Capital City or the Collar City, and after its boom it was always a working class mill town. But what a working class it had. …

Not everyone was elated by the discovery of the Cohoes Mastodon in 1866. Some went so far as to call it a humbug, which was saying something in those days. Arthur Masten reported in his The History of Cohoes, New York that there were a number of letters published in several newspapers by people who …

In 1866, the Harmony Company of Cohoes set about building its Mill No. 3, a new cotton factory on the east side of Mohawk Street across from their first building. While the foundation was being excavated, the skeleton of a mastodon was discovered, “an event which awakened great interest here, and caused Cohoes to be …

If you’re going to build hydropower canals, you’ve got to have water. (We started to touch on this topic yesterday.) From the earliest days of the Cohoes Company’s canal operations, they had control of a wing dam that diverted water from the river into their canals. About 1866, they constructed a sophisticated gatehouse that exists …

The 1843 map of the confluence of the Mohawk and Hudson Rivers contained some great detail about Cohoes, the city that grew up on the legendary falls and came to be known as the Spindle City for its role in the textile industry, much of which enjoyed hydropower well before steam engines were available. At …

Hoxsie is on a bit of a map jag. Again thanks to the resources of the NYS Archives, we have a very detailed representation of the confluence of the Hudson and Mohawk Rivers with the villages and islands, published by Luther Bliss, bookseller of Lansingburgh in 1843. Once again, click on it to zoom in. …